So I needed new rear brakes. I looked into internet prices, with shipping , w/o shipping...
I found that most hydraulic disc brakes are pre-bled. Meaning that any monkey like myself can install them in a few minutes. Then I measured the hoses on my bike. They're like 200mm shorter than the hoses provided with a new kit. That means that the slack of the new hoses either will be flopping around in front of me or they'll need to be cut down to the correct size. Which means, the pre-bled kit hose need to be re-bled after cutting the hose, which I don't know much about.
Enter the LBS. Seems that just a couple of years ago there were only a couple of shops around that employed a mechanic who knew anything about brake bleeding --now they're all smartenin up....not many riders have the patience, and/or time to learn this relatively simple process. Some specialized tools are needed also( a bleed kit ) I've bled my Avid Elixir 3's a number of times, with my smart, good  friend Wayne's help. He had a bleed kit.
To shorten the saga abit, every time I wanted to change the brake pads, I had to bleed the system. And still the brakes kinda sucked. Not much modulation and too much lever pull just to make them work, I was getting tired of it. This past June, up at NEMBAFEST, one of our local shops, Landry's, was setup in the expo, offering free bike maintenance. I took them up on the offer, told Jared and Brandon my sob story that I just told you. They bled everything and the brakes were cherry for a few weeks. Then back to the way they were. So, when I finally said "enough!", I looked them up again, back at their Braintree store. As I mentioned, I did some internet research, decided on Shimano, and sure, I could buy the pre-bled rear kit for almost 20 dollars less, but there was that issue of the hose needing cut .....
Now onto my real problem with brakes. They don't make me faster, they only slow me down!